A group of motherboard enthusiasts working for GIGABYTE, sharing their insider knowledge and general ramblings of the motherboard business, the tech industry, latest technologies and trends, and other random odds and ends.

Monday, November 29, 2010

The folks over at TweakTown recently got their hands on GIGABYTE’s flagship motherboard for the Intel 6 series platform and noticed a few differences from GIGABYTE motherboards in the past. Here’s what Sean had to say:

The P67A-UD7 from GIGABYTE has raised many questions. The product is clearly an almost complete redesign from their typical high-end layout. Gone are things like the Silent Pipe II cooling system and the 12 phase power that we had seen before. Now we are seeing a much more “brute” force attack on performance and also in design.

The overall effect of the board is of something new from GB. The black PCB, slots and even the new gold and black cooling suggests performance and power.

Have you ever wondered if there will be a reviewer or website out there keen to cover all hardware aspects of a motherboard you are looking to purchase? I am talking a lot more than just a layout or a mention of one or two controllers, I’m talking every controller and any feature worth noting and then discussion in-depth what they do and how they perform.

Well you are in luck today as we came across a review of the X58A-UD5 rev2.0 on Xtreme Systems written by sin0822 from Northern Virginia, USA. This bloke’s passion for hardware is evident in his methodical review of every single aspect of board’s design and functionality. This is a must read!

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Don’t be alarmed, GIGABYTE is not entering home renovation industry but it did provide over 1,200 pieces of motherboards and GPUs to

“Taoyuan International Airport to bolster the first impression and strengthen our country's image to visitors from other countries”.

The boards were then turned into an art piece that has a simple yet powerful message in delivering the image of Taiwan and its strong technology industry to its domestic and international visitors that pass through the airport.

If you’re travelling to Taipei soon swing by Gate B7 of Terminal 1 and check out this 30 meter wide feature wall.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

For those of you waiting in anticipation for the Intel’s next generation 6 Series to launch, Bjorn3d.com has a sneak peak at GIGABYTE’s top of the range GA-P67A-UD7 motherboard. Personally speaking, I really like the “Midas” look of this board, but here’s what Peter had to say:

The GIGABYTE P67A-UD7 motherboard looks like an excellent board for hard core gamers and overclockers. The overall motherboard has a very clean and high-quality design which represents GIGABYTE’s Ultra Durable 3 motherboards really well. We can physically feel the sturdiness of the board, making it even more suitable for heavy heatsinks and other coolers.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Check out a new review from OCAU (Overclockers Australia) about an inexpensive low power consumption NAS server based around the GIGABYTE D525TUD.

First step: the heart and brain of any PC build, the motherboard and CPU. A quick search revealed a Mini ITX wonderland of small, low power, high feature, ATOM processor based motherboards. I wanted a decent processor so I decided I would look for an Intel Atom D5xx series based motherboard, which is the highest-spec Atom CPU I could find released on a motherboard and available to buy in Australia. Ideally it needed more than 2 SATA ports, gigabit networking and a serial connection for my UPS. I ended up with two boards from reliable manufacturers that fit the requirements; the Gigabyte GA-D525TUD and the Asus AT5NM10-I. Both are priced similarly at $120 and $125 respectively. So let’s take a closer look.

I decided to go with the Gigabyte GA-D525TUD board: the four SATA ports just can’t be ignored and I like the sound of the faster processor, along with the fan forced cooling. Gigabyte is also a company I've had good experiences with in the past.

GOOC 2010 world final had a representative from Argentina for the first time and what a top bloke he is (forum alias nacho_arroyo).

I had the opportunity to have a chat about all things overclocking with the bloke during one of our tech mall walks in Taipei. He was very excited about extreme overclocking and has clearly rubbed off some of that excitement onto the local press because it is not every day you see overclocking featured in national press.

This takes me back to 2008 when Sydney Morning Herald did a story on my travels to 2008 GOOC final. The only difference is that they called me an overclocking extremist LOL.

Well done mate and keep spreading the overclocking virus in Argentina!

I love the fisheye shot of this watercooled X58A-UD9. I also spy a 3way GIGABYTE 5870SOC Crossfire. The man has great taste what can I say!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

No stranger to the Mini-ITX form factor, Jeffery Stephenson’s newest creation shows just how compact yet feature rich these little boards can be. He’s using a GIGABYTE H55N-USB3 motherboard in his latest mod called Level 12. Here’s an idea of what it’s going to look like:

He has USB 3’d it to the absolute max with what looks like a total of 8 USB 3.0 ports! Look out for Jeffery’s Level 12 at CES in January next year. For a full photo description of how he build it visit the thread on hardocp.com.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

The crowd goes silent temporarily from insane jelousy and then bursts into cheer when a forum member gmeup from OCAU (Overclockers Australia) shows off his new PC with 3 WAY SLI GTX580 and 4th card in transit he says.

Great choice for a PC but I’m not so sure about the bed covers though heheh.

He was so excited to install it all that he forgot to remove the protective plastic film from UD9 chipset heatsink!

Chew*, the king of AMD overclocking on XtremeSystems, is dancing today like it was 1999 (phrase inspired by a Prince song for the youngsters out there that don’t get it heheh).

He started testing his GIGABYTE 890FXA-UD7 rev2.1 which is the new monster RAM overclocker and sure enough he was doing almost 2200Mhz CAS7 32M SuperPi in a matter of miliseconds. The best part is that it was all on air cooling and with high NB speed as well.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

If you’re in the market for a new CPU and motherboard for your media center, check out GIGABYTE and Intel’s H55 mobo + CPU bundle on www.newegg.com. Besides the obvious sales pitch I really like the design of this Ad featuring a whole symphony orchestra packed onto a Micro ATX motherboard.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

A few weeks ago a TeamAU member, youngpro, took out the PCMARK05 World Record but had to contend with a strong score from a Greek entry of 38K. James got his new board, GIGABYTE X58A-UD7 (rev2.0) and tried again this weekend passing the 38K record with ease to set the new 39,5K world record. Congratulations!

Youngpro also took a video of his 40K run but cold bugged shortly after completing the benchmark. Tip, put down the iphone and save the score and then continue taking the video next time James.

This competition consists of 6 stages including 6 Core Wprime 32M & 1024M, 4 Core Wprime 32M & 1024M, and last but not least 2 Core Wprime 32M & 1024M. You will receive points for getting into the top 10 of each stage, and the person with the most points at the end wins. The more submissions you make, the better your chances, so get out there and start benching. Let's be honest, your stomach and teeth will thank you in the end, and you may just walk away with a brand new GIGABYTE motherboard. Good luck everyone!

Thursday, November 4, 2010

At IDF in September we showed early samples of our high-end GA-P67A-UD7 and GA-P67A-UD5 motherboards for 2nd generation Intel Core CPUs (also known as Sandy Bridge). Now there are some entry level board pictures online from a number of sites around the world. They are the P67A-UD3R, P67A-UD3 and H67MA-UD2H, and the articles can be found at these links:

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

We reported on the Best 3D Overclocker Contest a few days ago and the tight race between chew* and Rosty, speculating who will take it out. It wasn’t chew* nor Rosty that did win in the end but a Canadian overclocking named FtW (lol).

Now the funny part of the story surfaces, FtW is GIGABYTE’s new “Paris Hilton” of overclocking. He will have his photo taken and put on the motherboard home page. If I was him I’d be going for the Borat pink spandex swim suit look but hey that’s just me. I dare you FtW, do it, do it!

Monday, November 1, 2010

Gigabyte Australia recently announced the Gigabyte Electronic Sports Championships 2010 for Counter Strike: Source. The competition will consist of LAN qualifiers held in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane on November 21st as well as a 16 team online Qualifier to be held on Sunday November 28th.

The finals will be held on December 11th at Melbourne’s premier LAN event, Respawn LAN. The finals will be played on the latest Gigabyte & Intel powered gaming machines featuring Intel’s Core i7 950 processors and Gigabyte’s X58-UD3R motherboards and GTX460OC video cards. Redbull will be available for free on tap at the grand final.

The winners of the qualifiers in QLD and NSW will both receive an autoberth into the final along with $1000 cash to go towards flights whilst 2nd place will receive an invite into the Grand Final in Melbourne. More info here.